A Visualization of Unfathomable Wealth
fzakaria.github.io
fzakaria.github.io
tl;dr: wealth is a result of transactions and market valuations--not from stealing from a finite pile of money.
I personally don't care for this individual. However, this individual's wealth is largely a result of stock value. The individual owns stock in companies that the market has determined has extraordinary value.
In many of these articles posted here, the implication is that the individual has taken that wealth from others--this is a false narrative and it is meant to incite anger and jealousy, in my opinion.
Wealth is not something finite, like a lake full of money. There was not $1 trillion of money that could have been distributed to the masses.
Wealth is created in economic transactions--people decide the value of something owned by someone else. If someone decides to value your car at $1 million, then you have wealth in that car.
This individual created the companies with help from others (capital investment) that now hold the value that the market has assigned. The individual's wealth could go to 10 cents tomorrow if the market decided to do revalue the shares.
If people wanted to, the could donate all of their money that they use to buy stock to the masses. But that's just not human nature.
In the hands of such small elite individuals is even worse, because financial activity at this levels call for deregulations more and more, and without clear rules the effects on all the ordinary people are big and real, the "pile of money" is the real money missing in the lives of all the rest of the world.
Big wealths are ok, but when some (millions) are (quite) missing the basic for living, i think some adjustments are needed.
Approximately 156 million people in the United States own stock, which accounts for 58% of the total U.S. adult population (or roughly 45% of the total overall population).
Roughly 12.5 to 15 million adults in the UK actively invest in the stock market (excluding automatic workplace pensions).Percentage of Population: This accounts for 23% of the UK adult population (or roughly 18% of the total population).
Across the EU, only about 20% of families hold stocks directly or through mutual funds. This averages out to fewer than 15% of total EU citizens actively investing in capital markets.Because the EU consists of 27 distinct nations, stock market participation is highly fragmented. It varies drastically by country, with Sweden at the top with 37%.
Founders typically own a very small part of the total market value (market capitalization) of a business--on the order of 5% or less.
The top 10 publicly traded companies globally have a combined market capitalization of roughly $32.5 trillion.
Of this capital, approximately $27.5 trillion (around 85%) is owned by public shareholders, institutional investors, and retail buyers, with the remaining 15% held by company founders, insiders, and government entities.
Ok, this is the situation, but seems to me that few biggest holders in pratice has real control, within the complexity of the financial systems that shade the complexity of true ownership, and the wide public ownership, because the fragmentation, has no real control, only the benefits, if any, and this is the trick.
But the core question, to me, is: it is a real value? the shares/speculation market is more than ten times the real economy, it is safe? I doubt.
Look at SpaceX public shares, are 5%, the rest? Musk and others few financial actors.
Similar to Jeff Dean's visualization of numbers every programmer should know, visualizing scale is helpful -+ or at least I find it so.